


The Drumbeat

by TheGhostofStonewallJackson



Series: Lovecraftian Tales [2]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Gen, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23798116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGhostofStonewallJackson/pseuds/TheGhostofStonewallJackson
Summary: Even the gods have nightmares. A priestess from the Court of Azathoth witnesses the arrival of Nyarlathotep.
Series: Lovecraftian Tales [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728805
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	The Drumbeat

The universe was still young when it had happened, and few remain who were there to witness the blasphemous creation. There were few there at all, for his birth into known reality had occurred in the endless expanse of space, The Al-Aashi, the nothing, the dark chamber at the center of all things whose name must not be spoken aloud. At its heart was a mass of organic tissue reforming and dissolving into thousands of mouths and closed eyes endlessly through the eons, around the Thing was a haze of energy that corrupted the sight and mind of all within its reach. Azathoth. The Demon Sultan, he who is in eternal slumber. Around him, his servants chanted a lullaby to the sound of their beating drums and whistling flutes. They could not stop playing even as their hands and voices grew raw, not for a single moment lest they be blinked out of existence at his waking.

_“Ya mezin,_  
_Bila tarîtî pir dirêj bimîne,_  
_Bila şev şevek wek devê me be,_  
_dibe ku xewnên we aştiya we bînin.”_

_“Oh, great one,_  
_May the darkness last long,_  
_May the night be as endless as our devotion,_  
_may your dreams bring you peace”_

Devikahn watched the god as he screamed and contorted himself. She slowed her tempo, allowing a short span of rest to pass before each drumbeat, and the flutists followed her lead. The priests began a softer chant, a special one given to them by The Gate for emergencies like this. The priestess had only used it once before, and then peace had swiftly returned. 

Devikahn reached her consciousness out to the object of her exaltation as he failed to respond to the change in tune, channeling her sympathy and maternal warmth toward the nightmare child that she had been created to worship. She received only sparks of anxiety and burning fear in return. The others had noticed it too. A flutist from the other side of chasm fumbled with a note before catching themselves, a chanting voice faltered ever so slightly from below. Something was wrong. She had held her post at Azathoth’s side for so long, it could have been hours or eons, but this had never happened before. His cries were different, they were so tortured, so afflicted as if he were being attacked by invisible ghouls from all corners of existence. A brief bleat of concern passed through the priestess’s vocal organ as she edged closer to the central entity, humming the ancient lullaby all the while.

And yet, Azathoth continued to thrash into space. His priests exchanged nervous waves of thought, though they could not see each other through the gloom and vast distances between them. Devikahn’s hands began to tremble as she continued her slow, gentle drumbeat, pleading with the god in her mind to be calm himself, though he was clearly in far too much pain to heed her. The priestess wondered if The Gate would answer if she beseeched his wisdom in such matters. But why had he done nothing regardless, Yog-Sothoth who had created her and entrusted her with the responsibility of keeping the blind god in peaceful slumber? He was everywhere and in every time, surely with his power he knew that something was amiss with her charge. And yet The Gate did not take shape before her. Uncertainty mounted and Devikahn struggled to arrange the words to his invocation ritual between the muffled drumbeats. If this went on much longer she would have no other choice.  
A panicked thought reached the priestess from across the chasm before a thousand more repeated the same message. Devikahn instinctively started in alarm as Azathoth’s form began to dissolve into a gaseous sphere of energy. The space-time framework bent around this newly formed ball of density in its heart, dragging everything around it closer as if they were caught in a net that was drawing itself shut.

Azathoth could not hear in his present form, was he crawling his way back into the waking universe? Was this the end of everything? Devikahn clawed vainly at the stone walls of the chamber, fighting against the pull of gravity as the mass of energy grew in size and strained her molecular structure to its limit. She ducked her head and frantically whispered her hushed prayer to Yog-Sothoth as she mentally prepared herself for the imminent implosion of known reality.

It never arrived.

Devikahn barely had the presence of mind to process the explosion that sent her reeling out of the chamber and into open space on a violent wave of energy. The wave finally lost momentum a great distance away, and Devikahn was left adrift in The Nothing. She shuddered, pained, and disoriented as she struggled to collect her bearings. Her drum was lost in the vastness, but even across the distance she could hear one of her ever-diligent brethren continuing the dirge and she found some relief.

Microscopic particles of newly-formed matter drifted past her, occasionally binding together and forming minerals or water or even new stars which flickered to life for a moment before dying in the dark. Devikahn watched them absentmindedly as she floated limply in space. Someone else had been flung out into space as well, she felt another consciousness prying at her mind, deceptively innocent and questioning. As the elder priest, she felt responsible for her brothers and sisters and thus she projected toward him the same maternal thoughts she had previously used with Azathoth, though the Other was still frantic with excitement and thought at her in a forcefully questioning tone. 

_There is nothing to fear. The danger has passed._ Devikahn thought over the Other, still to no avail.

_I’m here, come and find me._

The priestess thought in exasperation as the Other persisted, though he had appeared to have calmed. He had some burning questions which he was struggling to think to her.

_I am here._

The thought echoed across the void, and it was Devikahn’s turn to be alarmed. She felt another aura of energy approach her hesitantly, manifesting itself as a cloud of white-hot matter not wholly unlike Azathoth. The priestess had served the god for a long time indeed, and it was only once out of every several lifetimes that any change occurred in The Nothing, and yet here before her was something different, something completely new.

Where did you come from?

The newly-formed entity expanded until he filled the space around her, pausing in furtive silence.

Azathoth.

Devikahn’s single eye widened in shocked realization  
.  
_He dreamed you into this reality? But no gods have been born of him in eons_.

_In his nightmares, I reigned over the Dreamlands. I roamed freely across the universe and in every dimension as no other god could. I showed the mortals the voice of the universe and they died in their masses screaming. Azathoth tried to destroy me, but I defeated every crusader._

You terrified him, and so he purged you from his dreams. 

Devikahn shuddered again as the strange god’s voice grew darker, tinged with sickening mirth at the remembrance of his infamous deeds and the ensuing chaos. The god’s fluid energy manifestation began to condense before her, attempting to shape itself into solid matter. He was learning the laws of this reality remarkably fast, having already mastered the language of telepathy in merely a few moments.

His new manifestation was an imitation of the priestess’s own, though particles of the new form continued to break off and dissolve into energy. An elongated head and snakelike head-crest formed from which a single gigantic eye peered into the darkness. Two arms and a torso carapace followed, and finally, the two centipede-like tails with massive pincers at the bottom took shape and unfurled. 

Devikahn watched the God bend his new universe to his will and create matter from nothing with mixed awe and dread. She bowed her head in respectful obeisance.

_And what shall we call you, master? You, bringer of madness who strikes fear into the hearts of all, even the great Azathoth?_

The god flexed his new tails in amusement, throwing his head back to laugh into the abysmal emptiness of the universe. His single eye narrowed at her as he swam closer through the void like a cosmic eel.

_Priestess, tell your people that I am Nyarlathotep, that I am the crawling chaos. And tell them,_  
_I am free!_

**Author's Note:**

> Here is what Nyarlathotep's manifestation in this story looks like:
> 
> http://fav.me/ddv7c77


End file.
